Amber and I returned late last night from a three-day trip to New England to attend my cousin’s wedding.
Thursday evening found us visiting friends in northwestern Connecticut, with whom we stayed the night, acquainting ourselves with their two-year-old daughter and trio of cats. They’ll be visiting for our wedding — which is two weeks from today, alarmingly — so we’ll see plenty of one another then.
Friday was the wedding itself, held at a Catholic church in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts. Though my brother attended Hampshire College, I’ve never been to Northampton before. It has a vibe very similar to Charlottesville, in the same vein as Asheville, NC and Ithaca, NY. Cosmopolitan but cozy, sophisticated but casual, I imagine I could be quite comfortable there. The downtown is badly designed, though — lanes in the streets are unmarked, traffic patterns are nonsensical, and it’s not pedestrian friendly.
The reception followed the service, just a few miles down the road. Good food, lots of family and an open bar made for an entertaining evening. Some of the family will be coming down for our wedding in a couple of weeks, making it a sort of an extended (suspended) wedding event. I couldn’t help but evaluate every aspect of the wedding and the reception, weighing my cousin’s choices against my and Amber’s plans, seeing what worked and what didn’t, and figuring what kind of last-minute changes that we could make as a result. As the first wedding that we’d attended since our engagement, such a comparison was inevitable.
Saturday morning we hit the road again. We headed south after a bacon & egg breakfast at a Springfield cafeteria-style diner, stopping for a leisurely lunch in Wilkes-Barre, PA before we got home shortly after dark.
Today is a day of wedding work. Next weekend is our last remaining weekend before the wedding, with the whole of Saturday occupied by the blog summit. We’d best get to work.
Lol! We returned tonight from a trip to New England. In our case, we were attending a family reunion held at Lake Sunapee in NH. Too bad, we could have car pooled – I am sure y’all would have enjoyed 13 hours in a car with two little ‘uns. I am sure the experience would have been quite educational. :-)
I had a similar experience the Summer of 2004 when some friends got married a month before hand. Actually, it was handy during the whole engagement period as we heard them tell us about some frustrations and surprises. It gave us a 30 day lead time on a few things and helped us fine tune the event — both of which came off nicely.
Congratulations to you and Amber!
Actually, NorthWESTERN CT
Northhampton is a great town. Quite a liberal bent, very well known for artsy, hmmm, dare I say -lesbian- inhabitants, which of course makes for a safe, entertaining and culturally enlightening place to visit. Did you get to see street performers on the main drag in the evening?
D’oh. I knew that, too. A mistake of the fingers, not the brain, or so I hope. :)
Of course, I was thinking (sans map) that we were headed to the western edge of CT, so this is all relatively new knowledge.
We only got to see a guy playing steel drums, which was pretty cool. I’ve only seen that done once before. I still don’t know how they work; it’s basically magic, as best I can tell. :)
If I’d known, I could have brought my flaming juggling clubs and unicycle and joined the fun. :)